Anyone want to go shoot a 20 foot python?

Visitors to Florida tend to divide their time between days at the theme parks and days at the beaches.

An adventurous few though head for the Everglades National Park, which is nicknamed a “sea of grass” as the nearly 40 miles wide and over 100 miles long park is mostly submerged in less than a foot of water covered with tall grasses and reeds.

According to tourist information the Everglades is home to lots of wild life from alligators to crocodiles to panthers to pigs as well as masses of birds, fish and of course insects.

One species those guides tend not to mention is the Burmese python which obviously is not native to Florida but yet there are an estimated 100,000 of the giant snakes slithering around feasting on whatever they can catch.

The pythons can grow up to 20 feet long and a few years back there was a grisly photo, which is shown above, of a python literally bursting open as it tried to eat an alligator. The other day a pet python escaped and squeezed a young child to death and that incident has finally focused the minds of state politicians that something should be done.

First of all they want to ban the import of the snakes but more controversially there is a growing movement to organize hunting expeditions to try and eradicate the pythons from the Everglades.

No decision has been taken yet on whether those hunts will go ahead but I can just picture locals oiling up their Uzis for a good shoot-out, especially if there is a bounty on each snake killed.

Environmentalists are in a tricky position here because while they want the snakes gone they can’t really support a slaughter. Animal rights group PETA is against any cull saying hey it’s not the snakes’ fault that their one time owners grew tired of them and freed them to the Everglades.

Some decision will be made before winter and I’m betting those with the guns will win out, as they usually do in the state. I’d bet that an organized python hunt will be added to the state’s list of tourist attractions… and there will be plenty of takers.